Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a memory

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^H

^^^^H

L N G F E L L w

A MEM G' R Y .

(Wihil^lIlL

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n

ct

HENHY WjlDSWOHTH LONGFELLOW

Jl ^emovt}

BY

Rev. p. murphy

ST. ANTHONY'S, LIVERPOOL

ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LONDON.

EDWARD HOWELL, LIVERPOOL.

1882.

s

^ ,

^^ •■'

TO

EDWARD R. RUSSELL, Esq

WHOSE SYMPATHIES ARE SO DEEP

WITH ALL THAT IS BEAUTIFUL IN LITERATURE

AND SUBLIME IN ART ;

^he foUotoing ^tcqta,

THE OFFSPRING OF AN UNBURTHENED HOUR,

ARE GRATEFULLV AND AFFECTIONATELY

INSCRIBED

PREFACE.

I never intended to issue this little Sketch in its
present form. I have, however, been encou-
raged to do so from a letter which I received
from the eminent literary gentleman to whom I
have dedicated it, and who so kindly read and
revised the original manuscript " It is indeed
charming," he wrote to me, " and will give great
pleasure to all people of literary taste."

With that approval, and that it may waken
a sweet memory of the dead poet, I cast it as a
simple green leaf on the boisterous ocean of
life, with the hope, perhaps, that it may not too
soon be overwhelmed and lost.

May, 1882,

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

Since the death of Charles Dickens on that
bright day in June, 1870, there has not been
such universal regret over an author^s grave,
as that lately manifested by the news flashed
to us from the other side of the Atlantic
ocean, that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had
ceased to live. He had been enshrined in
the heart of the reading world : the sweetness
of his songs had won him troops of friends:
he had secured the deep and abiding affection
of thousands who had never seen his face,
except through the medium of the photogra-
pher's or the engraver's art; or had never
heard the tones of his voice save from the
unsullied pages of his charming poetry. His
was a face so full of sunshine that it does not
easily pass from the memory : and the melody
of his voice, like the sound of a Summer even-
ing's Angelus, will waken through the coming
years sweet memories in many a worn and
weaned heart.

How universally beloved have been those
two men — Dickens and Longfellow. Between

3 LONGFELLOW

them and their unnumbered readers there has
been a common bond of pure and genuine
sympathy. And why? One has been the
novelist, and the other the poet, of the human
heart. In our generation no two other authors
have been so extensively read ; read by the
young and old, by the rich and poor. In the
homes of the wealthy, and in the cottages of
the humble, when perhaps all other writers
are excluded, a volume of Dickens, or the
poems of Longfellow will be preserved, to add
fresh charms to the unalloyed blessedness of
the domestic hearth.

Does the fascination of the two dead
literary chieftains consist in this — that they
touched those chords of sympathetic love,
whose music is always the purest and the
sweetest: that they wrote with truthfulness
and correctness of all that is humanly good
and beautiful in the world : that they sought
to teach mankind a lofly and a noble lesson,
for they aimed at leaving life brighter and
better than they found it. And if such be the
case, will not the creations of such chastened
genius survive the wreck of the wasting ages ?
Will not their works live after them, now that
they have passed into the silent valley, and
exercise for many years a wholesome influence
upon the hearts and affections of the human
race?

I must say that both authors have always

A MEMORY. g

had a great charm for me. I think I have
read every line that Dickens wrote, and I hope
have been the better for his deep and touching
lessons. His books have their own favorite,
hallowed nook in my library. They are the
friends I love best, and I spend many an un-
troubled evening with them. I had only the
pleasure of once speaking to him; but I
can recall the familiar figure on the platform,
and the thrilling voice reading and interpret-
ing the fond fancies of his prolific brain. I
felt his death as a personal loss, and I have
often since stole in, when the twilight was
deepening through the aisles of Westminster
Abbey, to lay a few flowers upon his unforgot-
ten grave.

Of Longfellow, I may say that his poems
have grown up, as it were, with my years. I
have committed them to memory, and recited
them at our village school. Later on, Evan-
geline — like David Copperfield — was my con-
stant companion during our Summer vaca-
tions at the seaside. The friends of those
never returning years, when writing to me
now and again from distant scenes, often say :
" Do you remember those Summer evenings
when you read Evangeline for us on the sea
shore ?' I never tired of those sweet rills that
flowed from the limpid fountain of his genius.

He might have been describing his own
books in the poem " The day is done" —

jQ LONGFELLOW

" Come read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling
And banish the thoughts of day.

Nor from the grand old masters,

Nor from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of time.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of Summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start ;

Such songs have powers to quiet

The restless pulse of care.
And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer."

Alas 1 that the wizard hand of the poet is
motionless, and already turning into dust;
and that the loom of his brain, wherein so
much that is bright and beautiful, was woven,
is now silent and at rest for ever.

It has been said of him, during his life,
and since his death, that he was not a " great
poet" But in what does the greatness of
poetry consist : or what are the elements of it?
Surely two of its elements are genius and suc-
cess. And that Longfellow had genius, — and
of a very high and refined order, — cannot be
questioned. He may not have had the be-
wildering genius of Tennyson : nor the power

A MEMORY, II

like Shakspeare to sway the human soul; to
kindle all its slumbering emotions, or hush
into rest its fierce, wild tempests. But that he
could accommodate himself to every mind :
that he could speak to every human heart :
that it required no painful thought, or wistful
lingering of the mind, to divine the idea
which fashioned itself before his own fancy ;
this, I believe, is evident. And who shall
gainsay his success ? Think of the thousands*
of worshippers, all the world over : think of
the vast sale of his books : think that he never
wrote a line, which, during his life, might cause
him a solitary moment's regret ; or which, in
dying, he would desire to be blotted away and
forgotten. All true greatness, all lasting suc-
cess, can only be the outcome of pure, moral
goodness.

In his story of " Kavanagh," he himself
has thus described great poets : — " All that is
best in the great poets of all countries is not
what is national in them, but what is universal
Their roots are in their native soil ; but their
branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that
speaks the same language unto all men, and
their leaves shine witJi the illimitable light that
pervades all lands."

The late Cardinal Wiseman, commenting
in a public lecture some years ago on the fact
that England had no poet who was to the
labouring and working classes of this country

12

LONGFELLOW

what Goethe is to the German peasant, thus
alluded to Longfellow : — " There is one writer
who approaches nearer than any other to this
standard, and he has already gained such a
hold upon our hearts, that it is almost unne^
cessary for me to mention his name. Our
hemisphere cannot claim the honour of having
brought him forth, but he still belongs to us,
for his works have become as household words
wherever the English language is spoken.
And whether we are charmed by his imagery,
or soothed by his melodious versification, or
elevated by the high moral teachings of his
pure muse, or follow with sympathetic heart
the wanderings of* Evangeline,' I am sure that
all who hear my voice will join with me in the
tribute I desire to pay to the genius of Long-
fellow."

Such is the well-balanced judgment of
man who had a keen appreciation of all that
was great and grand in every school of human
thought : who had a reflective, critical mind ;
who was an extensive reader in every branch
of literature : and who was regarded by the
lights amongst whom he lived, as a literary
Colossus, from the dawn, to the close, of his
subliifte career.

Another great writer, speaking of the poet* s
popularity, says of him : — " There is a human-
ity in his poems which is irresistible in the fit
measures to which they are wedded. If some

V

A MEMORY, i«

elegiac poets have strung rosaries of tears,
there is a weakness of woe in their verses
which repels ; but the quiet, pensive thought,
the twilight of the mind in which the little
fisicts of life are saddened in their relation to
the eternal laws, time and change, — this is
the meditation and mourning of every manly
heart, and this is the alluring and permanent
charm of Longfellow's poetry."

And a living critic writes of him : — " If he
were simply a scholar, he would be but an
annalist, or an annotator ; but being a poet of
taste and imagination, with an ardent sympa-
thy for all good and refined traits in the
world, and for all forms of this objective life
of others, his writings being the very emana-
tions of a kind generous nature, he has suc-
ceeded in reaching the heart of the public."

" I turn with delight," said John Bright in
a speech some years ago delivered at Man-
chester, "from Uie Poet Laureate's * Maud' to
the exquisite poem (Hiawatha) which has
come to us from the other side of the Atlantic."

These are deliberate and weighty opinions,
and they assign to Longfellow a prominent
niche in the consecrated temple which crows
and expands with the lapse of centuries.

It is not, however, so much the scope of
the present sketch to enter into any contro-
versy on the literary merits of Longfellow's
writings, as it is to put on record a memory

H

LONGFELLOW

which I have of him. It will be the simple
narration of a visit which I once paid him in
his beautiful house in Cambridge, where he
had been for so many years the light 6f his
own domestic circle, and the attraction of
those, into the cup of whose lives, he poured
so much sweetness and joy.

In the Autumn of 1879 I was travelling in
America. I went to the far West, and tra-
versed those scenes so familiar to the readers
of Hiawatha : went through the land of the
Dacotahs, and spent a sunny evening at the
Falls of Minnehaha.

'Mn the land of the Dacotahs,
Where the Falls of Minnehaha
Flash and gleam among the oak trees,
Laugh and leap into the valley."

In the last days of the American's serene and
beautiful "Indian Summer," I found myself
in Boston. It has been rebuilt on the ruins
of that ruthless fire of 1872, and its architec-
ture of red brick and white granite is now
vaster and grander than before. It is the
shrine too of Columbia's great literary celebri-
ties : Emerson has just spun out the evening of
his day not far from the hum of its busy life :
Holmes, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table," only deserts the city for his summer
holidays : the silver tones of America's great
orator — Wendell Philips — gather round his

A MEMORY, i^

platform all its intelligence, wealth, and
beauty: John Boyle O'Reilly, and Robert
Dwyer Joyce are treading at no great distance
in the footprints of their splendid teachers and
leaders. But to the traveller whose pilgrim-
age is laid among the memorials and achieve-
ments of fertile minds, Longfellow and his
home were always the great attractions.

Cambridge, where he lived, is about four
miles outside the City of Boston. There,
Harvard University,— the great rival of Yale, —
has grown year by year into the magnificence
which it assumes to-day : the spread and
development of its great intellectual life keep-
ing pace with the rise and growth of its archi-
tecture. Its famous library : noble quadrangle,
and grand Memorial Hall, win the enthusias-
tic admiration of all who love to see learning
enthroned in her own great temples. Not far
off is the historic tree pointed out proudly to
the visitor as "Washington's Elm" — for under
its green shadow George Washington took
command of the continental army on the 3rd
of July, 1775. Within a stone's throw is the
" Village Smithy," but no longer sheltered by
the chestnut tree, " Whose branches, bare,
shaped as a stately chair," found a comer at
the poet's fireside within the last few years.
In a thick netting of sycamore and elm,
among all the lingering beauty of floral life,
the " Herons of Elmwood," are heard over the
home of James Russell Lowell.

1 5 LONGFELLOW

*^ Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,
Where the boughs of the stately elms are
meeting.
Some one hath lingered to meditate,
And send him unseen this friendly Meeting.

That many another hath done the same,
Though not by a sound was the silence broken ;

The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken."

On the right hand side of the road, as one
journeys to Watertown: on a slightly elevated
green plateau, and somewhat removed from
the dust and noise of the highway, is a beauti-
ful residence — familiar to so many thousands.
Here lived the man whose "one touch of
nature made the whole world akin." It had
a history of its own before it came into
Longfellow's possession. It was built in the
latter half of the last century by Col. John
Vassol. After the revolutionary war it was
occupied by Thomas Tracy, from whom it
passed into the hands of Andrew Cragie, and
has been known ever since as " Cragie
House." Here, in the early years of his
University life — when he was a student, and
afterwards professor at Harvard — Longfellow
had lodgings; and as Dickens came
curiously enough into the possession of
Gadshill, so, ultimately, Longfellow, came
to be the owner of " Cragie House."
But perhaps the most interesting recoUec-

A memory:

17

tion entwined round its earlier history
is this — that " Cragie House " was the head-
quarters of General Washington at the com-
mencement of the Revolution. Longfellow,
himself, touchingly alludes to this reminiscence
in his poem " To a Child "—

" Once, ah ! once, within these walls,
One whom memory oft recalls.

The Father of his country dwelt.
And yonder meadows, broad and damp,
The fires of the besieging camp

Encircled with a burning belt.
Up and down these echoing stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares.

Sounded his majestic tread.
Yes, within this very room
Sat he in those hours of ^loom.

Weary both in heart and head."

Autumn, everybody had told me, was the best
time to see the poefs home in all the beauty
with which he himself loved to see it clothed.
Dark patches of summer green lingered here
and there among the scentless lilacs and the
drooping laburnums. The " fiery finger" of
the dying year had touched and changed from
green to yellow the broad-leaved sycamores
and the stately elms, but the red running
woodbine and the clustering ivy wove the
freshness of Spring among the lifeless, fast-
fading leaves. Through the luxuriant meadows,
in the form of an S, rolled that bright river of
which he has sung so sweetly : —

1 8 LONGFELLOW

" River that in silence windest

Through the meadows, bright and free,
Till at length thy rest thou findest
In the bosom of the sea.

Oft in sadness and in illness

I have watched thy current glide,

Till the beauty of its stillness
Overflowed me like a tide."

" Is Mr. Longfellow at home ?" My voice
trembled as it uttered the words, fearing he
might be absent

" Yes, Sir."

" Please hand him this letter."

As I stood in the hall my eyes rested on
the veritable " clock on the stairs," and it
seemed to be ticking the same solemn tune
that years ago fell on the poet's ear : —

" Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old fashioned country-seat ;
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall,
An ancient time-piece says to sill —

* For ever — never !
Never — for ever.*

Half way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands,
And from its case of massive oak.
Like a monk, who under his cloak
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas !
With sorrowful voice to all who pass —

* For ever — never !
Never — for ever !'

A MEMORY. XQ

By day its voice is low and light,

But in the silent dead of ni^ht,

Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,

It echoes along the vacant hall,

Along the ceiling, along the floor.

And seems to say at each chamber door —

* For ever — never !
Never — for ever !*

Through ages of sorrow and of mirth.
Through days of death and days of birth.
Through ewtry swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood.
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe —

* For ever — never !
Never — for ever !' "

I was ushered into a room on the left, known
as Lady Washington's drawing-room. Here
was kept and treasured a beautiful agate cup.
Besides its own intrinsic value, it was hallowed
in the poet's memory by a two-fold recollec-
tion — it was the creation of no less an artist
than Benvenuto Cellini, — and it formerly be-
longed to Rogers.

Presently I heard the sound of a light
footstep through the hall : my door opened,
and I was filled with deep emotion as I clasped
the outstretched hand which had woven so
many bright threads into so many human
lives. Let me pause for a moment to recall
the vanished figure. He was in his 73rd
year, and was of medium height : his counten-

20 LONGFELLOW''

ance was radiant with the sweetest and sun-
niest smiles : there was a profusion of white
hair — truly the silver crown of his long and
honoured years — ^which gave him quite a
patriarchal appearance ; there were lines on
his broad thoughtful brow, but they were not
deep furrows, only gentle wrinkles left by the
throbbing tide of thought subsiding within.
Beneath that brow were a pair of bright blue
eyes, through which shone out the wealth of
joyous sunshine which filled his heart. When
I add to all these the charm of a soft, melo-
dious voice, I think I have fairly drawn his
picture. " Oh ! how wonderful is the human
voice r he writes in Hyperion. " It is indeed
the organ of the soul. The intellect of man
sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and
in his eye; and the heart of man is written
upon his countenance. But the soul reveals
itself in the voice only."

What he had written in the " Golden Le-
gend" might well have been applied to him-
self : —

'^ Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations."

My first impression of him when I saw
him, only confirmed the views which I had of
him all through my life — that from so gentle
a heart there could only flow deep and tender

^

A MEMORY. 21

sympathies — ^that from so refined and cultured
a mind there could only be gathered the
chastest and the brightest pearls of human
thought.

As I went with him to his study — his own
favourite room — where he spent the greater
part of his time " never for a moment idle,
but thrifty and thoughtful of others," I
thought of his own words : —

" All are architects of fate,

Working in these walls of time,
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme."

How shall I describe that room, arranged
with such delicate care and precision by
his own reverend hand. There were bom
the most of his beautiful thoughts : there
the fanciful creations of his brain were
shaped into those poems which came across
the sea to take their places, like familiar
friends, at our fireside : there also, from time
to time, were gathered select groups of liter-
ary friends, whose faces still light up many a
circle; or who, perhaps, like himself, have
hidden the lustre of their eyes in the grave.

" In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality."

As it was his delight to receive, so also it was
his pleasure to exhibit those tributes of grate-

22

LONGFELLOW

ful and affectionate remembrance ] and those
relics and memorials of departed genius,
which came to him from every clime; from
friends he had known and loved ; — and even
from hands he had never touched in life.
Taking up a small wicker basket that lay on
the table in the centre of the room, he said to
me :

"You being from Ireland will take a
great interest in this. This is Tom Moore's
waste paper basket, sent to me by Mr. S. C.
Hall."

I did take an interest in it As I held it
in my hand I thought, within myself,^ how
many a precious morsel of paper had been
carelessly flung into it : what a valued trea-
sure all the wasted fragments would have
now become on the shelves of some public
library or museum. What beautiful thoughts
and ideas — discarded by the poet — would have
still remained to us ; perhaps, as " pearls at
random strung," but, nevertheless, worthy of a
long life, enhancing and enriching the litera-
ture to which they belonged. But very soon
after they were bom, this basket became their
grave, and the same hand that traced out the
fanciful creation, laid it quietly to rest for
ever.

Besides numerous volumes that lay scat-
tered about the table, there was one in which
I was very much interested indeed. It was a

• A MEMORY. 23

very early copy of Coleridge's poems, contain-
ing several annotations which the poet had
made with his own hand. In the centre was
the poet's inkstand, which Longfellow re-
garded as one of the greatest treasures he
had ever received. Between two windows — ^in
one of which was an orange tree, and an
Eg3^tian stork; and in the other his own
reading desk — ^was a cabinet containing many
editions of his poems and writings. There
also were all his manuscripts. To whom I
wonder have they been bequeathed? Are
they still to remain on the shelves where I
saw them, standing in a row ; the heirloom of
his genius, to his children and their descen-
dants : or shall his country, in the dawn of
her national greatness receive them and place
them in some hallowed niche — a sublime
memorial of her first great conquest on the
field of literature ? I remember, as I looked
through them, being struck with the neatness
and precision of the writing and the fewness
of erasures and interlinings. On the first
page of " Evangeline " there was only one
erasure, and that was the first word on the
first line. It went thus : —

This
There is the forest primeval.

" Perhaps," he said, " you would like me
to read you something."

I was only too delighted, and at my own

24 LONGFELLOW

request he read the closing scene in " Evange-
line/' beginning, " Thus on a Sabbath mom,
through the streets, deserted and silent, wend-
her quiet way she entered the door of the
alms-house." When he had finished he read
from another volume of manuscript, "The
Fire of Driftwood," " The River Charles," and
the "Bells of Lynn," which latter I have
always regarded as one of the finest pieces of
his versification. I shall never forget the
sound of that silver voice, full of feeling and
emotion in the very reading. He sat too in
the chair which was made from the " Spread-
ing chestnut tree " that overhung the village
smithy. It was presented to him by the
Cambridge children on his 72nd birthday —
Feb. 27th, 1879. '^^^ design of the chair is
very pleasant and in perfect keeping. The
color is a dead black, an effect produced by
ebonising the wood. The upholstering of the
arms and cushion is in green leather, and the
casters are glass balls set in sockets. In
the back of the chair is a circular piece of
exquisite carving representing horse-chestnut
leaves and blossoms. Horse-chestnut leaves
and burrs are presented in varied combina-
tions at other points. Around the seat, in
raised German text, are the following lines of
the poem : —

And children coming home from school look in
at the open door,

A MEMORY,

25

And catch the burning sparks that fly like chaff
from a threshing floor.

Underneath the cushion is a brass plate on
which is the following inscription : —

"To the author of the * Village Black-
smith/ This chair, made from the wood of
the spreading chestnut tree, is presented as
all expression of grateful regard and venera-
tion by the children of Cambridge, who, with
their friends, join in the best wishes and
congratulations on this anniversary. February
27, 1879."

He sent them the following verses, which
he gave me, and which are only found in the
later editions of his poems : —

"From my Arm Chair."

Am I a king that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne ?

Or by what reason or what right divine
Can I proclaim it mine ?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song

It may to me belong ;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree

Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,

When in the summer time

The affluent foliage of its branches made
A cavern of cool shade.

26 LON'GFELLOW

There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
Its blossoms white and sweet

Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of Autumn, with a shout,
Tossed its great arms about.

The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its^branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair.

Have by my hearth-stone found a home at last,
And whisper of the past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride

Repel the ocean tide,
But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme

Roll back the tide of time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,

The blossoms and the bees.

And hear the children's voices shout and call,
And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,

I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat,

The iron white with heat.

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me

This day a jubilee,
And to my more than three score years and ten

Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind.

And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought

The giver's loving thought.

A MEMORY.

27

Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,

And make those branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.

Longfellow had always a great love for
children, and revelled in their society : The
following story, told by Professor Lugi Monti
last year, is a fair example of the many that
have been, or that might be told. For many
years this gentleman has been in the habit of
driving with the poet every Saturday.

On Christmas Day, as he was walking
briskly towards the old historic house, he was
accosted by a girl about twelve years old,
who inquired the way to Longfellow's home.
He told her it was some distance down the
street, but if she would walk along with him
he would show her. When they reached the
gate, she said : " Do you think I can go in
the yard ?" " Oh, yes," said Signor Monti.
" Do you see that room on the left ? . That is
where Martha Washington held her recep-
tions a hundred years ago. If you look at
the window on the right, you will probably
see a white haired old gentleman reading a
paper. Well, that will be Mr. Longfellow."

She looked gratified and happy at the un-
expected pleasure of seeing the man whose
poems she said she loved. As Signor Monti
drew near the house, he saw Mr. Longfellow
standing with his back to the window, his

28 LOXGFELLOIV

face of course, out of sight When he went
in, the kind-hearted Italian said : " Do look
out of the widow and bow to that little girl,
who wants to see you very much." " A little
girl wants to see me very much ? Where is
she ?" He hastened to the door, and beck-
oning with his hand, called out : "Come here,
little girl, come here, if you want to see me."
She needed no second invitation, and, after,
shaking her hand, and asking her name, he
kindly took her in the house and showed her
the " old clock on the stairs," the chair made
from the village smithy's chestnut tree, and
presented to him by the Cambridge children,
and the beautiful pictures and mementos
gathered in many years of foreign residence.

Speaking of what should the longest sur-
vive him, I mentioned " Hiawatha," as pre-
serving to the American people the customs
and traditions of a race that is fast passing
away.

" No," he replied, " Evangeline will live
the longest"

" Why do you think so ?"

'• Because," he said, " Evangeline is full of
sympathy, and the world loves sympathy."

What a revealing of all that was benign
and beautiful in his souL On the walls hung
crayon portraits of his friends, and among
them I noticed Emerson, Sumner, and Haw-
thorne. Off the study was the library, three-

A MEMORY. 2Q

fourths of the walls being covered with books.
Here hung a portrait of Lizt, painted as Long-
fellow first saw him.

" I rapped at the door late at night," he
said to me as he pointed it out, " and Lizt
came down, holding a large lighted taper
above his head, to see who I was. I was so
struck with his remarkable appearance, that I
persuaded him to get painted in that position."

Amongst the treasures which he showed
me, there was a relic of Dante's coffin : there
was a cane made from a pine in Acadie :
there was also the iron pen made from a fetter
of Bonnivard, the prisoner of Chillon, the
handle being made from the mast of the
frigate " Constitution." A year or two ago he*
published a poem called the " Iron Pen," in
which he thus touchingly referred to both pen
and handle : —

" That this iron link from the chain
Of Bonnivard might retain
Some verse of the poet who sang
Of the prisoner and his pain.

That this wood from the frigate's mast
Might write him a rhyme at last,
As it used to write on the sky
The song of the sea and the blast."

Of those whom we conversed about I
remember that Dickens seemed to have the
uppermost place : he had known him inti-

^Q LO^^GFELLOW

inately : had read all his books : and his pub-
lic readings had afforded him infinite pleasure.
He had a profound regard for Tennyson —
" the sweet historian of the human heart " —
and he looked upon Denis Florence Mac-
Carthy as one of the greatest Irish poets that
ever lived.

Before I left him he gave me a small vol-
ume of his poems, with his autograph : a copy
of his verses to the Cambridge children : his
portrait, with his name written in full across
it : and lastly, at my own request, the quill
pen which he had used while writing.

On New Year's Day, 1881, 1 received from
him a volume of his " Poems of Places," de-
voted to Ireland, with a letter, part of which I
have produced in lithograph.

As I stood on the threshold of his door,
and bade him farewell, my hand literally
trembled in his, and I must leave imwritten
all the true reverential love that filled my
heart as I looked on his beaming face for the
last time. I turned back on the dusty road,
long after I left him, to peep once more
through the yellow trees, upon the shrine of
so much purity and goodness.

This is my " Memory of Longfellow" : it
is the only wreath which I can weave ; but
worthless, as I know it to be, I lay it down as
my tribute of affection on his new made grave.

A MEMORY, . ^i

He said that "Evangeline" would live after
him: but is there any reason to doubt that
many of his shorter pieces \vill also live to a
ripe old age in the hearts of his numberless
readers ? Sunk into the perpetual rest of the
wayside churchyard, amid the loving regrets
of his world-wide friends, his name — ^like a
household word — will be for ever embalmed
in their remembrance.

" How sweet a life was his, how sweet a death !
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer ;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of Summer, full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.''

As over all he wrote "are spread the sun-
beams of a cheerful spirit, the light of inex-
haustible human love," so they will never
I^erish.

" His song was of the Summer-time,
The very birds sang in his rhyme ;
The sunshine, the delicious air.
The fragrance of the flowers were there."

Still will the voices of children — always so
dear to himself — be laden with the burthen of
his sweet poems : still will the harmony and
melody of his muse soothe the weariness of
those who are occupied in the stern pursuits
of human life, weighed down with all its cares
and anxieties. A poor tempest-tossed sailor,

32

LONGFELLOW.

I

whom I found in an hospital, once told me
that " Evangeline," which I gave him to read,
had helped to make him better. Perhaps in
sick rooms the dead poet's verses will soften
pain, and beguile the tediousness of many a
long and fatiguing hour. For this alone, bless-
ings and benedictions without end be for ever
on his peaceful memory. The traveller who
crosses the ocean, and who owes to "the van-
ished hand" many a ray of sunshine that he
let in on his troubled heart, will linger near
that house — historic for evermore — which the
Angel of Death has so lately darkened, and
will seek out, under the green trees of Mount
Auburn Cemetery, the grave where the gentle
heart of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is
already mingling with its mother dust